Parents of the Revolution

This essay is an analysis of the gender roles of the modern period as they are represented by James Joyce?s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and how the gender roles presented relate to current post-modern perceptions.

Through the narrator?s use of Stephen Dedalus, the reader is given access to the values and attitudes that underlie gender roles in the text. The reader sees the thoughts and reactions of Stephen Dedalus, however this creates an uncomfortable position when read with modern sensibilities as the contemporary reader?s values lie counter to Stephen? in his treatment of women. This creates a condition in which the reader sympathises with the females within the text.

Within A Portrait, there are four ways in the images of women are represented.[1] Most women in the text are either nuns, wives or prostitutes, but there is also the object of purity, beings capable of redeeming others from sins, particularly those of the flesh. As L.F. Gulvin says it: "To [Stephen], women were comprised of several species - saints, martyrs, mothers or sinners."[2] The nuns, as with other religious figures within the text, are represented as being the traditional interpretation of asexual beings. They are women to the extent that they have a womanly form, however, they lack any distinct characteristics or behaviours that can be defined as masculine or feminine. Stephen? own mother, Mary, is the example of how today?s reader sees the mother figure as a creature of long-forbearance and suffering who is responsible for caring for herself, her house, her children and most importantly for the period, her husband. The prostitutes are barely human to Stephen; they appear and fade in swift succession with few descriptions given of who they actually are, merely what they do for the artist as and when he chooses. This active choice empowers the men within the text. Their ability to disregard women as they choose is an important part of the power structure created and signals to the reader Stephen? sanction of this structure. Similarly, there are the objects of worship that are also represented for the use of men. Stephen creates within himself visions of beauty based on women who strike him as beautiful. This highlights the dichotomy created by the text in the differential between the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church regarding sexual abstinence and the necessity of those same pleasures in the continuance of the species. Carnal lusts are condemned by the Church but, through figures such as the Virgin Mary, the Church creates feminine figures of sexual purity similar to the female objects of purity worshipped by Stephen. However, due to the teachings of the priests, Stephen feels condemned to a personal hell and expresses this through his relationships with women. As the narrator describes, "He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin." (p. 106)

Because of the presence of other strongly Catholic male roles within his life, including his father and especially the priests, Stephen rejects the idea that the Church is at fault in its teachings, instead opting for his own fault. This, however, simply shift the focus of the power structure so that Stephen views women as inferior for different reasons without realising that there remains a gender inequality. This dichotomy, Stephen?s battle between lust and his interpretations of his own damnation, causes him to classify women, thus they are either deserving of damnation, prostitutes, or present as objects of purity, the Madonna figures. Men are not interpreted in this manner. Marguerite Harkness explains, "women stand in shadows?.separate from the work of the world, or from the world of the fiction itself" therefore the women are marginalised by their lack of strong presence in the text.[3]

Masculine roles appear in slightly fewer forms within the text but in greater quantity and pervasiveness. There is the father figure, the priests and Stephen himself. The father, exemplified by Stephen?s own father, Simon, can be frightening or possessing of a degree of paternal protectiveness and pride, as is demonstrated by Simon. Yet actual feelings of love between men are not expressed. The paternal character can be caring, but it is distant. Stephen?s role as a man in life seems then to consist mainly of the urgings that he is given "to be strong and manly and healthy." (p. 88) Stephen takes this suggestion as an urging to imitate the behaviour of other male roles, all of who contribute to the continued dominance of the patriarchy in both secular and religious forms.

However, Father Arnall, in the fire sermons, preaches fiercely against the sins and temptations of the flesh. This constructs a third conflict between gendered sexuality and gender and the morals of the Roman Catholic Church. In its criticism of the Catholic Church, the novel is also then a criticism of the traditional masculine values created by such an entity. The lack of female counterparts to the priests shows the way in which the modern Catholic Church disregards the necessity of women.[4] Stephen succumbs to the cavalier attitude to bonds of emotion between men. As Marguerite Harkness states "Stephen appears quick to identify with his father and his father?s chums, not so his mother."[5] By rejecting his heritage in favour of the new worlds of art, Stephen moves away from the religious value systems of masculinity espoused by his father. He is father to himself. His lack of requirement of an actual woman disempowers the women of the text, particularly his own mother, to whom he no longer has connections[6] His succession of whores point towards an acceptance of male promiscuity, as does the appearance of the fact that he assimilated this behaviour from his own father, casting no doubt on Stephen? inability to have changed masculine perceptions to a more equitable arrangement of power between genders.[7]

As Stephen himself experiences in his first assumption of the traditional duties of manhood regarding the role and involvement of the man in the working and political arenas,
"he became slowly aware that his father had enemies and that some fight was going to take place. He felt, too, that he was being enlisted for the fight, that some duty was being laid upon his shoulders." (p.68)

Men did not form strong emotional bonds, any emotion they felt was best kept private and to the self.[8]

"How [a woman] appears to men is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life." writes John Berger.[9] This emphasis upon appearances is not applied, however, to Stephen, or any other male characters. Suzette Henke believes that this support of the patriarchy is due to the fact that "women are portrayed exclusively from Stephen?s point of view."[10] These characters maintain their control over the women of the text by neither party usually being quite aware of the situation. Awareness, when it occurs, is rapidly suppressed. Father Arnell?s comment, that "He came to the woman, the weaker vessel", indicates the roles that the Catholic Church prescribes for men and women . As Suzzette Henke states, "in the battle between male and female, Mother Church emerges as a bastion of sexual repression."[11] However, the feminist movement may have found some sympathies within Joyce. This is shown by the revolutionary attitudes expressed by some of Stephen?s compatriots:
"Stephen, you're an antisocial being, wrapped up in yourself. I'm not. I'm a democrat and I?ll work and act for social liberty and equality among all classes and sexes in the United States of the Europe of the future." (p. 191-92 My italics)

The text confirms popular stereotypes of the period. The priests are of particular importance in this as they demonstrate, as other males, the masculine ability to ignore women as they so choose. This choice of the exclusion or inclusion of women disempowers women within the male-dominated social arena. The offer for Stephen to join as a member of the priesthood is symbolic of his contribution to the continuance of the religious forms of masculinities.

Stephen represents the modern patriarchal man; learned, secular and sensitive within his relationships with other men. As he is described by Heron, "Stephen is a model youth. He doesn't smoke and he doesn't go to bazaars and he doesn't flirt and he doesn't damn anything or damn all." (p.80) As much as the other characters may see Stephen as embodiment of the modern male form, he is, nonetheless, an active participant in the maintenance of patriarchal power structures. He is as guilty as any other man within the text of actively preventing women from gaining power.[12]

The positions taken up by the men and women of the text represent a highly gendered patriarchal society. This differs in many degrees from current perceptions; however, the text still gives an indication of changes that are possible within the gender structures.

[!1]. Classic Notes. Joyce?s Women in Dubliners, Portrait and Ulysses. http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/dubliners/essays/member_essays /essay3.html Date accessed: 21st April, 2002.
[!2]. L.F. Gulvin. Analysis of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Chapter 2. http://www.bookwolf.com/Free_Booknotes/A_Portrait_of_an_artist_as_a_y/Cha pter_2i_-__A_Portrait_of_an/chapter_2i_-__a_portrait_of_an.html Date accessed: 30th April, 2002.
[!3]. Marguerite Harkness. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Voices in the Text. Boston: Twayne Publishing, 1990, p57.
[!4]. Seamus Deane. Introduction to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin Publishing, 1992. p. xxi.
[!5]. Harkness, p.57.
[!6]. Ibid. .p. 56
[!7]. Suzzette Henke. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Misogynist. Illinois: Inillois University Press, 1982. p.57
[!8]. Gulvin,
http://www.bookwolf.com/Free_Booknotes/A_Portrait_of_an_artist_as_a_y/Chapter_2i_-__A_Portrait_of_an/chapter_2i_-__a_portrait_of_an.html Date accessed: 30th April, 2002.
[!9]. John Berger. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Publishing, 1972, p. 46.
[!10]. Henke. p. 55.
[!11]. Ibid,. p. 59.
[!12]. Ibid. .p. 55.